Online desk research is a systematic examination of the available online sources and data in the context of a research objective. In many research assignments, initial desk research is strongly recommended before primary research to gain background knowledge of a subject as well as get useful leads that will help to get the maximum from a research budget.

Directs Primary Research
Online desk research directs primary research with a quick analysis of research focus and gives initial feedback with less effort. With this initial information, the researcher can clearly know which information is more important or less important, readily available or not available and can make changes to the direction of the primary research if necessary. Based on this, the research process can also be modified according to the requirements of the research.

Gauges the Scope of The Primary Research
The researcher can have a panoramic and clear view of the primary research based on the information he got from the desk research. Researcher understands the required information, and which information to through more light upon, and what is not needed i.e. enough information is readily available from a reliable source. Based on this researcher can suggest changes to the scope of the research.

Reduces Cost and Time Span of Primary Research
Online desk research identifies the topics of primary research, where enough information is readily available and avoids duplication of work. If enough information is readily available online from a reliable primary research resource, then it helps to fasten on that specific topic in the research. This saves a considerable amount of resources like research cost and time that can be refocused on the necessary areas of research and get high quality results.

If a primary research needs to find the population census, seldom people will start with a population survey; instead they get demographic information from www.census.org, which is reliable secondary resource. Therefore, even pure primary research needs some help from secondary data, otherwise the research topic is completely new and innovative. A good researcher knows how to use both primary and online desk research to integrate various information sources into a comprehensible and reliable market picture. This combination is effective in giving out reliable output that can be used to make good decisions.